Christmas In The Heart

For the better part of a week now, I've been immersing myself in Bob Dylan's wondrous new release, Christmas In The Heart. Yes, a Christmas album. Now I know there are people in the world who would rather run barefoot over a mile of upturned plug tops than listen to three quarters of an hour's worth of syrupy crooning, but I am not one of them. I adore Christmas, and one of the things I adore most about Christmas is the tat. Give me glitter, give me fake snow and plastic trees and cheesy decorations, and I'm rolling like Porky in a chocolate bath.
But Bob Dylan making a Christmas album? Hardly seems real, does it? Some things are just plain right from the off, Bing with that pipe, for instance, but others seem about as stable as a souped-up cracker. Ole Bob has been rolling pretty well of late, rapturously received chart-topping albums, a hit radio show, a neverending tour that seems to be getting better by the day. But a Christmas album? We know (from the little that we really know of him) that he has always been a contrary sort, the sort who will gladly shatter your perceptions at the turn of a card. But we also know that he is someone who likes to do his own thing, blaze his own trail, as it were, and damn the consequences.
A Christmas album is a risk. Bob's voice has been going downhill for years and is probably fast approaching the bottom by now, and Christmas songs, tacky though they may be, and trite and sentimental and all the other cuss words that people without hearts like to throw at them, are undeniably well written. The have to be, in order to have survived for so long. The best of them have lain down challenges to even the very finest voices of the past hundred years.
Bob sounds great. He's grizzled, warbling, and he steps out of melodies like they are oncoming traffic, yet somehow, some impossibly how, he makes it work. The music is all that it should be, bright and shiny, full of fun, tight as November's jeans in January, but what makes the whole thing work is Dylan's deep and unwavering charisma. I've woken three days straight now with 'Must Be Santa' scratching at my throat and churning my blood to butter, and if I wasn't such a happy elf perhaps I would be reaching for the twelve-gauge by now. But happily for me, and for all those within buckshot's distance, that's not the case. I love it, LOVE IT!!! I am pleased, thrilled, overjoyed to report that Bob's still got it, whatever it is. If you like Christmas the way all good children, even the grownup ones, should, then you will surely love Christmas In The Heart. So go on, bolt out and buy it.

P.S. - If you need further convincing, please note that all royalties go to charity. So not only will a purchase be filling your head with yuletide sounds (and in October, no less - who could ask for more than that) you will also be helping out some of the worthiest causes around.
Well done, Bob, on both counts, and here's hoping for a sequel next year!!!

Simon Van Booy, King of the Short Story

It has been quite a while since I have last posted a blog and this is just a brief stop-off to shout the news that my good and lovely friend, the brilliant Simon Van Booy, yesterday won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest prize for a short story collection.
The whole festival was really great, full of sweet people (Leisl Jobson, Madeleine Darcy, ZZ Packer etc.). I was very honoured to be asked to read (sharing the bill on the night with Simon, in fact) and I have to offer my congratulations to Patrick Cotter, head honcho of the Munster Literature Centre, for organising such a wonderful week (ably assisted in his endeavours by Jennifer and Marina).
The readings went down a storm. Simon's book is a truly incredible piece of work, and it had to be, in order to edge out the competition. So, commiserations to those who missed out (especially to Shih Li Kow, who I very much enjoyed meeting and whose collection, Ripples and other stories, is for me one of the must-reads of the year) but a huge and hearty stuffed-with-Clonakilty-black-pudding congratulations to Simon!
There is so much ground to cover, but last night was a late one and I have to get some real writing done, so I'll post again soon, maybe even with a picture or two!

Reading In September

The Munster Literature Centre have announced the line-up for this year's Frank O'Connor Festival (check out www.munsterlit.ie for full details).
I'm scheduled to read at the School of Music in Union Quay (Cork...) at 7 p.m. on Friday, 18th September, sharing the bill with Simon Van Booy, one of the shortlisted writers for this year's Frank O'Connor Award.
I don't do many public readings, tending as I do to turn into a quivering mess when stood in front of expectant faces, but it will offer a chance at some (much needed) publicity for my book of stories, In Too Deep, and I suppose at the very least it will be an experience. Please come along if you can...
The line-up for the entire festival looks pretty good, actually. Some middle- to heavyweight hitters will be on show and it should make for a pretty good week, all things considered. Also on the Friday, at 4 p.m. in the City Library, Nuala Ní Chonchúir will be officially launching her third collection of short stories, Nude.
Wait, let me clarify. It's not that she'll be launching her new collection in the nude; that's just the name of the book. Nude. Got it? Good.

John le Carre

I've just started John le Carre's latest novel, A Most Wanted Man, and sixty pages in, they old boy has got me. I've always loved le Carre's novels, as much for the bleakness of their atmosphere as for their enviable plotting. If you bother to look, you'll surely find copious comparisons in the media between his writing style (and, I suppose, subject matter) and that of Graham Greene, yet Greene is generally quite highly lauded in literary circles whereas Mr. le Carre tends to be gently tucked aside and more or less dismissed as a serious writer. Well, I'm sure his books sell well and I doubt that he requires validation from the critics, but I do think he tends to be unfairly treated in reviews. At his best, I think he is as good as it gets, a sharp stylist adept at dealing with difficult subject matter. And I'd take The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over most of the Pop-Idol, hip-as-Miles style outings offered up by today's so-called literati.
Next up for me, two imminent releases: 'Noah's Compass' by Anne Tyler and 'Inherent Vice' by Thomas Pynchon. Tyler will, I'm sure, be solid and beautifully dependable (one of my favourite ever writers). With Pynchon, well, fingers-crossed for another V...

Newgrange and the Hill of Tara

I'm so bad at this blogging business. All it takes is a few minutes to scribble something down but sometimes the minutes just won't give themselves up to a bit of freestyling. I've spent this week trying to work on a story that keeps flexing new, and previously unguessed at, muscles. Then, the other day (one is much the same as the next to me, except Sundays, which always feel different) I received a rewrite request from an anthology that I had submitted to and then forgotten about.

And in between all that, I managed to squeeze in a long-promised pilgrimage to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara. All I can say is, astonishing. Being at Newgrange is like looking up at the stars on a clear winter's night. Built 5000+ years ago, predating Stonehenge by five hundred years and the Pyramids of Giza by a thousand, it is an astonishing feat of engineering. But even more than that, you actually get a sense of the people who lived there. It is an undeniably spiritual place.

Tara is everything that Newgrange is, and yet the two are completely different. Where the hand of jackpot tourism (albeit gently) pats Newgrange and its stunning surround, with guided tourbuses and a state-of-the-art museum/visitors centre, the Hill of Tara has been left to the ravages of wind and time. The ancient mounds are signposted, and a little bit of pre-visit reading will stand you in good stead, a little investigation into the wonderfully mottled history of the place, but walking there gives you a sense of nature as well as history. The grass is long, the view on a (rare as hen's teeth) clear day supposedly spans thirteen different counties, and there are sheep everywhere, grazing or tending to other business. At the bottom of the hill, there are a few shops, gimmicky places that push the usual sort of wares to new age hippies and wandering wiccans. Yet it seemed obvious to me that the Irish government doesn't really want to know. The place is poorly signposted, facilities are meagre, and there is an almost intentional playing down of the fact that this was once, and for thousands of years, the most important piece of ground in Ireland, the seat of the High Kings, a truly ancient wonder. Now, though, the new motorway is being pushed through the valley, and the powers-that-be, the powers that we made, have decided it is easier to do the dirty work of progress when the eyes of the country and the world are averted.

Go to Tara, read about the history of the place and go, stand on the Mound of the Hostages or rest your hand on the Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny. Listen to the whispering of the wind and open yourself to the spirits of the past, taste the ancient breath of the place on your tongue. It really is something worth doing, a true joy to behold. Go, and go today or tomorrow, because the way that we have been allowing our government to ride roughshod over everything that ever mattered and all in the threatening name of progress, rest assured that the day is coming soon when there will be nothing left to see.

A Brief Skim

A very quick blog entry today... So much going on, so little time!
Pretty good week, actually, all things considered. It has rained more or less constantly, which always helps the writing cause. I find rainy days to be perfect for contemplating life and all its many twists. Yesterday, I started a story that has filled me with hope. No one else might ever like a word of it but I'm loving every minute spent slaving over it. Don't you just love when that happens?
Also found time this week for a great James Taylor concert, and this morning I was interviewed by the wonderful poet/songwriter, Cliff Wedgebury, on Cork's CUH-FM. We talked about (and listened to) music, and we discussed my new collection, 'In Too Deep', as well as writing in general. A surprisingly enjoyable experience, actually...
Finally, tomorrow I'm off to Dublin to catch one of my childhood heroes, Bruce Springsteen. He will be rocking the RDS and I'll be there to swallow every syllable of his gospel.
This has been just a brief skim of a nice week. I'll delve a little deeper just as soon as I get a minute to spare.

Crosby, Stills & Nash pictures...

Stephen Stills (with an unfortunately placed microphone obliterating much of his face), onstage at the Marquee, Cork, 29th June 2009



Graham Nash and David Crosby, onstage at the Marquee, Cork, 29th June 2009



Irene (Dharmaraja), me and Graham Nash, outside the Marquee in Cork, 29th June 2009